FUTURE AND PAST--End of the Beginning

from Sarajevo Survival Guide

CULTURAL SURVIVAL

The besieged city defends itself by culture and thus survives. Groups and individuals create whatever they used to create before the siege. In impossible circumstance they produce films, write books, publish newspapers, produce radio programs, design postcards, stage exhibitions, performances, make blueprints for rebuilding the city, found new banks, organize fashion shows, shoot photographs, celebrate holidays, put on makeup...

Sarajevo is the city of the future and of life in the post-cataclysm. In it on the ruins of the old civilization a new one is sprouting, an alternative one, composed of the remains of urban elements. Sarajevo lives a life (foretold by) futuristic comics and science fiction movies.

HISTORY

If you play with lines on the map of Europe, you will (find) Sarajevo. It is revealed where lines cross over the Balkans. First you draw a line from Paris, through Venice and then to Istanbul, the closest East that Europe knew for centuries. A second line starts in northern Europe, goes between Berlin and Warsaw, through the Mediterranean, and then to Africa. These lines meet over Bosnia and Herzegovina. And, in fact, they cross over Sarajevo.

Here wars were started and here they went on, while people loved and longed for love. Here merchants were selling goods from all over the world and life was close and distant to ways of the East and West. It was Western for the East, and Oriental for the West. It was the life of Sarajevo.

Its poet, Muhamed Nerkesi (1592-1634), far from his beloved city, wrote:

"Nothing comes close to my city. It is a pearl on the earth, saraj of springs and gardens, unique in the world...High mountains around it, old and noble, snow peaks covered with mist are kissing the sky...It is impossible, no doubt, to name all the beauties of this place..."





PLEASE SEE:

DART GAME--The beginning
THE ESSENTIALS--Everyday life
THE EXTRAS--Non-essentials
DIVERSIONS
A COOKBOOK FOR WAR

OR RETURN TO:

THE INTRODUCTION